There’s lots of speculation swirling around Dixons’ commercial property plans. They’ve posted mixed full year results, showing underlying business pre-tax profits of £85.3m, compared to £90.9m in 2010. These figures exclude discontinued operations and closed businesses.
Once these are taken into account, the figures show a pre-tax loss of £309.4m, compared to the previous year’s profit of £112.7m. Like-for-like sales were down 3% and group sales were down 2%.
The consumer electronics retailer has announced an exit from its PC City venture in Spain, renovating and leaving its entire commercial property operation, at a cost of £70.6m. Other exceptional items that had to be written off include £53.2m of goodwill write-downs relating to Greek market exposure and £106.3m for its pan-European e-commerce retailer PIXmania, attributed to falling consumer confidence and the introduction of a new online platform.
Major restructuring is happening in the UK, where Dixons’ commercial property portfolio is being streamlined down from 654 to 450 outlets. An extensive programme of store refitting as part of The Renewal and Transformation Plan is underway; leases on smaller, less profitable shops are being allowed to expire, and Currys and PC World brands are being placed in combined locations.
In Europe, commercial property expansion is planned, particularly in the Nordic countries, where sales were up 8% to £2.23bn and profits rose to £106m.
Elsewhere in the retail market, Best Buy UK has posted losses of £62.2m, up from £21m.
The electrical retailer has been a busy player in the commercial property market, opening six ‘Big Box’ stores in the past financial year and four more since March this year. The £40m increase in deficit means the reported target of thirty new UK stores by 2013 is now on hold;50% of the company is owned by Carphone Warehouse, who issued a statement saying it was now ‘evaluating’ future strategies.
Could you please help me. I would like to know by how much British commercial property prices have changed since this time last year (July 2011- July2012). For my project.
Hi Nick, thank you for your comment.
Please use the contact form on our site and we will try and assist you with the information needed for your project 🙂